I had this while navigating child and adolescent mental health services. If you miss a phone call twice you lose your child's place on all waiting lists. There must be so many stressed and/or dysfunctional and/or busy parents who do this. I had to be surgically attached to my phone for months.

Wetherspoons pubs offer smaller adult portions of lots of their popular dishes. It’s such a good idea but I’ve hardly ever seen it anywhere else.

31 years and mine still looks terrible pretty much every day

Genuinely think it’s one of the best comedy scripts for a Hollywood movie this century. Ludicrously well judged.

Addendum: I just realised it couldn't have been Coast of Utopia we were studying as he was still writing it. Perhaps in was The Invention of Love. But I wonder if he brought up Coast of Utopia and what he wanted to accomplish and that's what I remember... Memory is so tricky. So unreliable.

Had hoped to achieve and why he thought he hadn’t made it work. He talked with such genuine humility and humour - was so utterly self aware, so unencumbered by ego - it was sort of breathtaking. I have a lifetime of admiration for him as a writer and a decent human being. He was one of our best. ❤️

Interesting but less than perfect plays in front of one of my key playwriting heroes. So was everyone else and the room was ominously silent. Finally, I stumbled through a brief analysis, at which point Stoppard took over and pointed out *everything* that was wrong with the plays. Everything he 2/

Who on earth at Penguin thought it a good idea to let Peterson near such a thing!?

I have noticed in the past 5-10 years how often I will find myself intensely comfortable with a writer, comedian, philosopher, journalist, academic and then discover they are *exactly* my age - normally to within 1 or 2 years. I do push against it but my unconscious mind isn’t helping…

Had similar experience going to Romeo and Juliet in Wales recently (where it’s really rare for anything other than a Shakespeare comedy to be performed). Lots of laughing in dark places. Not fault of production, which was good. Also, grown ups were laughing but not kids. Was it nerves? Or alcohol?

Anecdotally, but I’ve noticed that same thing. All the French families I know who came here and stayed arrived before 1940. (Slightly relevant caveat: can think of a number of British/French/African people who were born in African nations, spent years in France and permanently relocated to UK.)